What better way to spend your vacation days than reading letters from Seneca to Lucilius. The only challenge is that my brain can absorb just about one letter per day. Perhaps two, if they’re short. Every time I hear somebody say that Seneca’s letters are an “easy and accessible way” to learn about Roman Stoicism, I laugh out loud. Well, apparently not for me.
In any case, while reading Seneca’s letter On Sharing Knowledge I came across the following passage:
Nothing will ever please me, no matter how excellent or beneficial, if I must retain the knowledge of it to myself. And if wisdom were given me under the express condition that it must be kept hidden and not uttered, I should refuse it. No good thing is pleasant to possess, without friends to share it.
The ancient Stoics were of course, as we’ve been told numerous times, not at all concerned about material possessions. So when Seneca says “no good thing”, it’s safe to assume that he refers to something higher than physical things, such as knowledge.
A funny thing though: Seneca himself was a very wealthy person, as can be expected of a senator and imperial advisor in Rome, and he surely had a lot of material possessions – something his contemporaries frequently criticised him for. But let’s just assume, for the sake of reverence, that all of that was irrelevant for him.
Me, on the other hand, being in the simple state of mind that I currently am, read the passage and immediately thought about physical possessions. But no matter how you read it, Seneca was right! The idea that “no good thing is pleasant to possess, without friends to share it” is equally applicable to wisdom and knowledge as it is to land and estate.
Well, I don’t own much and I definitely don’t have an estate, but we do have a nice place in Hanko, the southernmost summer city of Finland, and this weekend eight of my good friends will be coming over for the Hanko Regatta weekend. The official regatta programme (i.e. the sailing competition) is cancelled due to COVID-19, but the unofficial programme (i.e. the “real” programme”) is attracting more people than ever.
And it is during this weekend I’ll be able to arrange some A-level “quality time” for my friends at Villa Maija and its surroundings. In other words, I’ll be able to share something that’s important for me with with people I care about. And the fact that I’m able to share it, makes it even more precious.
I know, I know, this is not at all what Seneca had in mind, but frankly I don’t care. That’s how I read the letter today, and the next time I read it, the associations and conclusions might be something totally different. But that’s exactly how a good letter from Seneca is supposed to be, I presume.